Troubled Teens

Street Kids

For the runaways, gangbangers, abandoned and abused teenagers on an 11-day ride to the Grand Canyon, the challenge of pedaling 700 miles is nothing compared with the searing pain of their past.

tracy ross

(Photo by Sam Adams)

Several hundred thousand revolutions after they started, the boys from Ridge View Academy are still criminals and their leader’s heart has stopped beating at least twice. But they’ve made it this far and there is no turning back. Over the past five days, they’ve ridden their bikes 256 miles from their medium-security school east of Denver to the lush, green farmlands of South Fork, Colorado.

At midnight last night, they pulled into the town campground and ate cold turkey sandwiches while shivering in their matching gray-and-maroon sweat suits. Before bed, they’d pissed—three to a group, ­accompanied by guardians—in the grimy, cinder-block­­ bathroom. While some slept soundly­ in the cool, damp grass that smelled of mud and snowmelt, others tossed fitfully.­ Because to some of those boys, riding a bike and sleeping in a tent seemed far scarier than driving through the streets with a trunk full of semiautomatic weapons.

Somehow they made it through the night. And now they are creeping up Highway 160, 428 miles from the Grand Canyon.­ This is their first big day: 101 miles with an elevation gain of 9,072 feet. They ride past creeks shimmering like tinfoil, trailheads beckoning hikers, and oily black cliffs cut through with waterfalls. There are nine boys total, all from Ridge View Academy in Watkins, Colorado, a school for some of the state’s most violent juvenile offenders that’s run by the Division of Youth Corrections (DYC). Some battle addiction, others belong to gangs, one once beat his mother with a pellet gun—but they are also members of the school’s remarkably successful cycling team, and despite their troubles, they still have hopes, dreams, and longings.

At the front, Aaron*, 18, prays Thank you, God, for letting me do this. Several yards behind him, Austin, also 18, belts the ­lyrics to an Adele song. Not far off his wheel, Duncan, 16, lurches up the hill but manages to shout “Hoo-ah!” each time he crosses a seam in the tarmac. Nearly every boy has happily traded the regimented schedules of Ridge View for the chance to climb more than 48,000 feet over 675 miles.

In the past, this trip has come at the end of cycling season, as a reward to the boys for training and racing without incident. But this year the multiday trip comes before race season. As a result, the kids are out of shape, which means their journey is even more grueling. Yet there is more at stake than simply pedaling to the Grand Canyon. For some students, the ride is a chance at reformation. If they can commit to pedaling up to 100 miles per day for 11 days, says their head coach, Greg Townsend, this can become a catalyst that helps them move past the pain, confusion, and mistakes that led them to Ridge View.

Townsend has led these trips for two decades and has witnessed remarkable transformations. He also knows that marshaling nearly a dozen juvenile offenders several hundred miles by bike has risks, despite precautions set in place by the ­academy. On past trips, students have tried fleeing, fought each other, and told Townsend they wanted to swerve into traffic. This is why Townsend is paying close attention to tall, lanky, 17-year-old Tyler, who has fallen off the back.

Townsend hoped this would be the day his student finally committed to the ride, but Tyler has only pedaled even slower. Near the top of the pass, the coach takes a hard line with the rider, who responds that this is the week he and his dad used to ­celebrate their birthdays. Cake, presents, everything, but then his dad killed himself in his apartment. The pain led Tyler to attempt his own ­suicide, the results of which still line his arms in long zipper scars.

Townsend wants to give Tyler a bear hug. Instead, he says: “I get it. You’re hurting. But you’re back here blaming: your mom, your dad, circumstance, society. But what I want to know is what about you, Tyler? What do you want to get out of this trip?”